Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:41PM
from the i-will-take-the-codec-to-mordor dept.

fluor2 writes "Team XBMC have released XBMC 12 'Frodo.' Features for XBMC 12 include: HD audio support (including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD) via the new XBMC AudioEngine (OS X/iOS not yet available), live TV and PVR support, h.264 10-bit (aka Hi10P), 64-bit support in OS X to match the 64-bit support in Linux, improved image support, support for the Raspberry Pi, initial support for the Android platform, improved AirPlay support across all platforms, improved controller support in Windows and Linux, advanced filtering in the library, video library tags to complement movie sets, advanced UPnP sharing, and more!"

The live TV/PVR "functionality" is still dogshit, apparently shoehorned in at the last minute. I've used it with NPVR and MythTV backends and it doesn't do the most basic things like pause or rewind. Other than that it's lovely.

The live TV/PVR "functionality" is still dogshit, apparently shoehorned in at the last minute. I've used it with NPVR and MythTV backends and it doesn't do the most basic things like pause or rewind. Other than that it's lovely.

I think you're doing something wrong. I been running frodo in a raspberrypi using mythtv backend, and I can rewind, fast forward, pause and schedule recordings. I even returned the cable boxes to my cable provider, 4 of boxes and now comcast refunds me $3 [comcast.com] per month for not renting their cable box.
I could not do any recordings if the backend was tvheadend but it works just fine with mythtv and VDR.

It's a limitation of the add-on that you're using. Multiple add-ons support these features, and you can find all the information on our wiki: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=PVR [xbmc.org]
And as the dev who merged PVR support in and maintained the PVR support in XBMC for the last 3-4 years: no it was not shoehorned in. You just failed to read the documentation that is available and/or you're using a backend or add-on that doesn't support these things.

In really basic terms, in Hi10p more data is used to define color which means there is less banding for a smaller file size. It's an H.264 profile which uses 10 bits of information to represent color. It's a huge improvement because there is less file size, which in the long run saves bandwidth.

Advantages
Significantly higher compression ratios resulting in decreased file sizes.
Far more information is preserved from the original, removing such issues as banding and poor detail in dark scenes.

Disadvantages
Slower decoding and encoding.
No support for DXVA or CUDA as of writing.
Slight compatibility issues with older devices during playback.